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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23779441">How Cute</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainBrieOnToast/pseuds/CaptainBrieOnToast'>CaptainBrieOnToast</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tsuredere Seventeen [12]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>SEVENTEEN (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2019-07-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2019-07-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 20:55:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,724</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23779441</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainBrieOnToast/pseuds/CaptainBrieOnToast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone is always calling you cute. You hate that. Sure you do a lot of cute things but people always use it as a way to belittle you and you hate it so much.</p><p>But, well, if Lee Chan wants to call you cute you suppose that’s okay.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lee Chan | Dino/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tsuredere Seventeen [12]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1342339</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>How Cute</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There were few things in life that you didn’t like.</p><p>You were, for the most part, a bit of an oddball. You were rather patient. Uncharacteristically so in fact. </p><p>You liked your job, you liked pretty much all people. You were a passionate baker, taking the time to find the best recipes and then execute them in the most precise ways possible.</p><p>As such, you spent a lot of time experimenting with things. You were used to failure, to feeling disappointed, and most importantly used to have to start over from scratch.</p><p>All things that generally frustrated people were things that you participated in every day, multiple times a day in order to maintain the best results possible. Something sweet. Something moist. Something <em>perfect</em>.</p><p>Your baking expertise often translated over into your daily life.</p><p>You couldn’t have conversations over and over again but you could hope that after all the times you added the eggs and flour you could remember exactly what to add in order to make the perfect conversation.</p><p>Your relationships were as such <em>very</em> sensitive. If you accidentally baked the cake for too long it would burn. If you didn’t bake it for long enough you couldn’t feed it to others.</p><p>You were meticulous when it came to baking. You sacrificed your night’s sleep in order to bake the perfect cake and weren’t afraid to stay home for as long as necessary to ensure that every ingredient was combined perfectly.</p><p>Again, it was the same for you when it came to your relationships. You sacrificed so much to keep your friends by your side. Your time, your money, your <em>everything</em>. No matter how inconvenient something was for you, if your friends needed it done, you would get it done.</p><p>Because you learned how to bake before you learned how to make friends, and while you knew that a cake would spoil after sitting too long, you knew friendships were meant to last if maintained properly.</p><p>You cherished your friendships as much as anyone did, but still, sometimes your friends made you mad.</p><p>Like when they called you cute.</p><p>It was such a small thing. You knew that other friendships had broken up over less, and honestly over all your anger towards them calling you cute was ridiculous but it was <em>such</em> a degrading word.</p><p>You had been called cute all your life. By people who didn’t know you, and by people who did. Any guy around you who wanted to do something that wasn’t platonic and <em>wasn’t romantic</em> either would call you cute as a pick-up line. If people wanted to compliment your looks but couldn’t find the right word to fit your appearance they always defaulted to cute.</p><p>And then your <em>friends </em>started calling you cute. When you did something dumb like trip or drop something, you were <em>cute</em>. When you said something stupid you were <em>cute</em>. When you got passionate over something your friends didn’t know much about you were <em>cute</em>. When you dressed a little different then everyone else you were <em>cute.</em></p><p>No matter what you did, no matter what you said, no matter how you acted, or dressed, or <em>did anything</em> you were cute.</p><p>God, you were so sick of it. To the point where it took all you had in you to keep from angrily telling the next person who dared to call you cute to your face to shut their <em>stupid mouths</em>.</p><p>The school bell rang and you began to pack your things, trying not to think too much about how angry you had been just a second ago. You were just letting small things fester, there was no need to worry so much about something that in the end just wasn’t that important.</p><p>“Hey, there cutie, how’s it hanging?”</p><p><em>Cutie</em>.</p><p>The word registered in your mind before the voice did. You turned around, half a glare spread over your face when you suddenly saw who had said it in the first place.</p><p>The rage died, your anger all but disappeared, and suddenly the nickname you hated so much was less of a hindrance, and more of a comfort.</p><p>“Lee Chan,” you said as a greeting. A short smile crossed your lips. “I thought-”</p><p>Before you could finish, Chan was flicking you in the forehead.</p><p>“Just call me Chan. How many times do I have to tell you that?” He asked an annoyed expression spreading over his face. “C-h-a-n, <em>Chan. </em>It’s not that hard.”</p><p>Chan was a friend of yours.</p><p>Now <em>that </em>was exciting to say.</p><p>For three years he’d just been another classmate. One of your <em>cutest </em>classmates. and you didn’t mean that in the degrading way most people meant when they were talking about you.</p><p>Chan had this way of always knowing what to say or do to make someone laugh. He was attractive and nice, and one of the friendliest people you knew. He was just quiet at first. He kept mostly to himself, even when he was with his friends, so at first, most people assumed he didn’t have much of a personality and was therefore expendable.</p><p>You had always resented that enough for him. Nobody was expendable. When making buttercream you couldn’t leave out a single ingredient if you wanted to make the perfect frosting. Without butter, it wasn’t buttercream. Without powdered sugar, it wasn’t sweet. No component in any friend group, classroom, or public setting was expendable, because without any one person it just wasn’t the same.</p><p>And Lee Chan was the perfect example of that. He was just the kind of person everyone needed in life, and most people had no clue.</p><p>“Lee Chan just rolls off the tongue more easily,” you responded defiantly.</p><p>For crying out loud, you didn’t call Strawberry Cheesecake, just cheesecake. It left out one of the most important details. <em>Strawberry</em>. You couldn’t just call Lee Chan, Chan when he wasn’t just that. He was all of the components put together.</p><p>“Well make it roll off the tongue <em>less </em>easily. You address me like a stranger. I walk up to people and I say this is my friend, y/n, and you say ‘hi. I’m Lee Chan’s friend’ and suddenly it sounds like I hired you,” he protested. As he spoke he draped his arm over your shoulders, pulling you close to his body.</p><p>You didn’t protest the closeness. In fact, you loved it when he did stuff like this. You two had only been close like this for a month or two, so being treated like the two of you had been best friends since day one felt like heaven.</p><p>“Who cares if your friends think I hired you?” You mumbled. “You know you didn’t hire me.”</p><p>“What if I want you to meet my parents? Huh?” He asked. “I can’t have my parents thinking that you are some kind of personality for sale.”</p><p>“And why would I be meeting your parents?” You protested. “Your line of thought is all over the place.”</p><p>“It’s because you’re cute,” Chan explained, pursing his lips and using his free hand to rub your cheek somewhat teasingly. “And my parents love cute people. They made me after all.”</p><p>You rolled your eyes, but that warm smile spread across your lips once again.</p><p>How come when <em>he </em>called you cute, your innate reaction was always to smile so brightly?</p><p>“Well, I can’t argue with such flawless logic,” you admitted with a shake of your head. “Where are we going?”</p><p>“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Chan said with a laugh. You frowned deeply.</p><p>“Lee Chan, I’m hungry! You can’t take lunch from me,” you said with a pout. He laughed.</p><p>“You know you are <em>so cute </em>when you pretend like you aren’t going to do something with me,” Chan responded airily. You scoffed.</p><p>“I don-”</p><p>“You see that over there?”</p><p>Chan pointed across the schoolyard to where a large tree was growing. It was a hugely popular lunch spot, and you almost never went anywhere near it. Only some days after school when a lot of people weren’t around.</p><p>“We aren’t going there are we?” You asked him. “There’s too many people around to ea-”</p><p>“There’s nothing to worry about, no one will be watching us,” Chan waved off.</p><p>“How can you be sure?” You asked uncomfortably. “After all, I’m so <em>cute</em> nobody can even bear to take their eyes off me.”</p><p>Chan laughed, his whole body shaking against yours.</p><p>You hated it when people used you for support.</p><p>You could barely support yourself and your own emotions, so how were you supposed to be able to support anyone around you?<br/>It was for some reason, really easy, however, when it came to supporting Chan. Despite the fact he was so obviously heavier then you, it was easy for you to adjust yourself to keep you both up.</p><p>“Because we’re going up into the tree.”</p><p>You scoffed out loud, but when you looked over at Chan you realized he was serious.</p><p>“Lee-”</p><p>“<em>Chan. C-h-a-n</em>,” Chan interrupted. You rolled your eyes.</p><p>“Don’t be ridiculous,” you mumbled. “We aren’t eating lunch in a tree Lee Chan.”</p><p>“Sure we are,” He replied, ignoring the use of his last name again.</p><p>You didn’t argue with him again, but you were certainly protesting it in your head. You crossed your arms over your chest and nudged Chan with your shoulder in annoyance.</p><p>“<em>You </em>can go up the tree if you want to be up there so badly, but you aren’t getting any of my lunch.”</p><p>“What? You’d just let me starve?” Chan asked, just hugging you tighter to him. You sighed and broke free from his arms, looking up the tree defiantly.</p><p>“I’m not going up there.”</p><p>Chan shrugged.</p><p>“Suit yourself.”</p><p>He shrugged his backpack off his back to the ground and took hold of a low tree branch. He pulled himself up expertly hoisting himself up onto one of the lower branches. He sat comfortably on the branch and waved down at you.</p><p>“<em>Lots</em> of space up here,” he said cooly. “And boy oh boy am I hungry.”</p><p>He leaned back rubbing his stomach dramatically.</p><p>“You sure you won’t join me?” He teased. You rolled your eyes.</p><p>“Get down from there, you’re going to fall if you aren’t careful enough,” you chided. Chan laughed.</p><p>“Oh is <em>that</em> what you are scared of?” He asked. He stood up and started to walk across the tree branch. “Uh <em>oh</em>, I think I might fall.”</p><p>“Stop playing around you jerk,” you blurted, unable to help how nervous you were to watch him teetering up there.</p><p>“Then why don’t you get your cute butt up here?”</p><p>You huffed and ran your fingers distractedly through the strands of your hair. You didn’t want to climb the tree. Honestly, that was the last place you wanted to be.</p><p>But… When you heard that dumb word, you suddenly forgot about all those things you hate so much, and really just started focusing on stepping a little bit out of your comfort zone.</p><p>Like those macaroons, you had made the night before…</p><p>You had tried to make macaroons four times in your life.</p><p>Each and every time you had failed.</p><p>They were too hard.</p><p>You tried again and again, following the recipe as perfectly as you could but every time your stupid macaroons came out wrong. Flat. Tasteless. No feet. The most important part of the stupid cookies were the feet, and yet you had <em>none</em>.</p><p>But last night you had tried to make them again because you were complaining about how hard they were to make and one of your friends had said you were cute for trying so much. Then Chan said that he knew one day you’d get it right and that night… Well, that night you had.</p><p>It was partially thanks to him. You had never thought to try again.</p><p>You took a hold of the lowest tree branch and hoisted yourself up next to him.</p><p>“You’re the worst,” you mumbled, elbowing him lightly in the side. He laughed and then pretended to fall again, but in the process, his shirt caught on something and he actually fell off the branch to the ground.</p><p>It wasn’t high up. In fact, it was low enough that you could jump off the tree branch without hurting yourself. But still, you were super worried.</p><p>“Lee Chan? <em>Lee Chan? </em>Lee Chan! Say something! Are you okay?” You blurted frantically, grabbing him by his shoulders and shaking him. A couple of your classmates looked your way, but you didn’t care.</p><p>Chan had his eyes shut, god had he hit his head wrong on the way down?</p><p>You leaned closer to him, trying to see if you put your face close enough to his if you could his breath on your cheeks.</p><p>Instead, when you got too close, you felt your shoulders get grabbed and you were pulled down, your lips colliding with Chan’s. You were so surprised that you pulled away, your ears filled with the sound of Chan’s laugher. You smacked his shoulder.</p><p>“You’re a jerk, Lee Chan!” You blurted. Chan leaned up, his shoulders still bouncing with laughter.</p><p>“And <em>you</em> are the cutest person on the planet,” he said softly.</p><p>You rolled your eyes.</p><p>“You know…” You started off the sentence as if you were going to actually tell him that you didn’t like being called cute. But, you knew that the sentence would change before you got to the end of it.</p><p>“That you don’t like being called cute?” Chan asked. You looked over at him, startled by that response. He rolled his eyes to the side. “Yeah, I know you don’t. The others are just to dumb to notice that you don’t like it.”<br/>“But-”</p><p>“You don’t hide it as well as you think. You get a bit aggressive when people start calling you cute,” Chan continued, barely taking in account that you were surprised at all.</p><p>“I don’t get aggressive,” you grumbled. “But if you know then why…”</p><p>“I was trying to get you to admit it yourself,” Chan explained. “Can’t be spoon-feeding you the things that you already know.”</p><p>You sighed.</p><p>“It’s different with you. That’s why I never said,” you admitted. “When everyone else calls me cute, I get so mad… But when you call me cute-”</p><p>“Let’s go out.”</p><p>You turned over to him slowly, your eyes taking him in nonchalantly. It wasn’t really a question. It was clear to you that he wasn’t expecting a negative answer for you. In fact, he said it as if you had already answered</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>You let your head fall backward and you looked up at the leaves on the tree above you.</p><p>“I’m pretty busy baking. I don’t have time to go on dates,” you said softly.</p><p>“Then our dates will be me helping you bake,” he responded. You rolled your eyes.</p><p>“Do you know your way around a kitchen at all?” You asked. He pretended to be offended, but you knew that he wasn’t really.</p><p>“Guess you’ll just have to teach me,” he stated with a laugh. You got to your feet and looked across the field.</p><p>“Man, lunch is almost over,” you stated with a groan. “You wasted our entire period.”</p><p>Chan got to his feet as well and picked up both of your bags.</p><p>“I wouldn’t call it a waste. After all, now you are…” He paused dramatically and leaned closed to you, his breath tickling your ear. “Lee y/n.”</p><p>He started laughing and began to run down back across the schoolyard. You groaned and begrudgingly started after him as well.</p><p>Even though you knew he was doing it just to provoke you, and even though you knew that he was just trying to make your cheeks red, and your cheeks puff out, you continued to run after him.</p><p>There were few things that you would let people do to you without you getting mad at them over it. You weren’t as much of a pushover as people seemed to think you were. In the end, Lee Chan was different. He could do anything he wanted to you you thought, and you would probably still smile in the end.</p><p>Maybe it wasn’t too bad to be called cute every once in a while. Especially if it was just by a boyfriend.</p>
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